Chapter Ten
Lina
Lina had read about it before. Fight, flight; freeze, fawn. The body’s answer to threats, reactions meant to protect, to keep oneself alive.
Choosing wrong was a repeat problem in Lina’s life. Adrenaline made her clumsy, stopped her from thinking. Locked her with the consequences, and in Lina’s case, consequences usually hurt.
“We’ll put the prisoner in my room,” Kai said, his head hanging as River and Lina dragged him back down to the acolytes’ building. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth, landing in messy splats onto the dirt path.
“Why your room?” River asked, adjusting his hold around Kai’s waist.
Kai spat onto the ground. “Because I’m fresh out of fucking dungeons, Swords.”
Eyes forward. Keep your mouth shut. Lina bit her tongue, wondering how far she might make it if she dropped him and fled. She felt Kai’s arm curling around her shoulder, her neck. A noose.
She should have run, let them all kill one another.
She’d forgotten the lessons Castor had taught her.
How quickly things could turn, how far she could fall.
She had been safe once, when she was very little: the treasured baby sister, awestruck by her brave brother, always following, watching, learning.
Two coals in a hearth, the priests used to say of them: same skill level, same rank, same face.
How she had loved her brother, until she first noticed the twinge of dread that accompanied it. It started small: the smashing of a mouse that had scared her; cutting a girl’s hair to the scalp for a slight Lina couldn’t even remember. Nobody can hurt my family, Castor would proudly declare.
When they were eleven, Castor had come to understand what exactly the priests meant by purifying flame.
Lina had found a stray cat, had tried to bring it home; it scratched her, frightened, and suddenly it was out of her arms and in Castor’s, pinned to the ground.
It writhed and yowled, the blistering flame in Castor’s hand making its wide yellow eyes glow.
She had never screamed like that, screamed until her throat tore. “Don’t!” she shrieked, pulling at him. “Let it go!”
The way Castor looked at her, the blank stare, dim confusion, turned her stomach to ice. “It sinned,” he said simply, the fire poised inches from the creature’s face. “It should be sent to Sowelan.”
That was the first time Lina understood that what she felt for him was fear. It was also the first time she’d ever hurt anyone.
The cat escaped, but thereafter, it was Lina who needed purifying.
Whispers surrounded them once they’d hauled Kai indoors, the dozens of eyes on them making Lina’s skin itch. The only one brave enough to approach was a guard, panicked, arms out to help carry the load.
“Get Mikau,” River commanded. He sent the man a sharp look when he questioned him. “Don’t make me repeat myself. We’ll be in the warden’s room.”
The door had been warded, but with Kai too weak to maintain it, they found the floor outside his quarters slippery with slush.
Sighing, River kicked it aside, rummaged through Kai’s pocket for his key (“Please, we’re in public,” Kai mumbled, and then laughed, a single frail Ha), and unlocked the door.
Lina wasn’t sure what she’d expected – perhaps military cleanliness, leftover habits from growing up on a Mahina ship – but the pigsty they found beyond the door wasn’t it.
Books and loose sheet music littered the floorboards, with his desk and table shrouded with empty wardstones, a collection of mugs and used teabags; seashells, cat treats, notepapers scrawled with messy shorthand.
The bed, oddly enough, was made, although the duvet was mussed like he’d last fallen asleep atop it.
A cat – a stray Lina had seen outside the building before – trilled lazily from the pillow before leaping off the bed and out the opened window.
It stared at them from its perch on a tree bough outside, its tail swishing.
“There’s my mug,” was all River had to say about everything as he heaved Kai over to his bed and laid him down.
The warden moaned, his bloody face scrunching with pain.
“Mikau will be here soon.” River straightened, pointing at Lina. “You, sit, and don’t make any sudden movements. Keep quiet while Mikau’s here.”
Lina bristled. “What would I say?” she asked, stepping around a stack of books towards an armchair pulled up against the wall.
She moved aside a violin case, locked tight, and glanced out the adjacent window as she sat, judging the distance from here to the ground.
Too far. “‘Help, Mikau, I’m a Moth and I’m already captured’? ”
A knock on the door shut her up well enough. Mikau let themself in, their mouth falling open when they saw Kai.
“Menon wept, what the hell happened?” they demanded, brushing River aside.
“Lover’s quarrel.” Kai gestured at River. “With Swords.”
“Again?”
River rolled his eyes. “No.”
Mikau pulled their hair back and knotted it at their nape before kneeling over Kai. They ran a whorl of healing water over his cheek, his nose. Kai emitted a sharp cry when Mikau began moulding the cheekbone back into place; then he quieted, went limp, his eyelids fluttering shut.
“He busted it good,” Mikau murmured. “He’ll be out of commission for a few days, I’d say.”
River watched Kai as Mikau worked, but whenever Lina so much as shifted in her seat, his gaze flitted back to her, hawkish. Quailing, she averted her eyes, trying and failing to drum up an acceptable story.
There was nothing. Nothing. She was guilty by association, condemned because Sowelan thought her appropriate, for whatever divine reason, to grace with His magic.
Lina traced the old burns on her wrists through her sleeves, the size and shape of Castor’s hands. Thought of Ione and Ami and Cynthia and everyone else, the hatred they would have for her.
I never wanted to hurt you. She heard herself begging them all to listen, to believe, but it was Ione’s face she envisioned, Ione’s disgust that made her heart kick.
“He’s pretty concussed,” Mikau said, finished.
They stood back and wiped their hands on a handkerchief, scanning their work; miraculously, Kai looked almost good as new, his cheekbone no longer sunken and shiny with swelling, although his eye was still blackened.
“The bruising’ll go down soon, but he’ll need rest.” They held out a hand, something small and white on their palm.
A tooth. When River just looked at it, Mikau set it on the side table.
“I couldn’t save the molar. When he wakes, tell him I tried. ”
“Thank you, Mikau,” River said, and when Mikau didn’t make any move to leave, “I’ve got it from here.”
They looked to River, and then to Lina, who, at a loss, shrugged. “Does anyone need… separating?”
A dense pause. “Actually, we’re in the middle of a situation,” River said tactfully. “Which I have a handle on. So, if you don’t mind…?”
Again Mikau glanced at Lina, uncertain.
Help me, Lina wanted to say. Her mouth dried up, the futility of the plea not lost on her.
“Please don’t make me pull rank,” River said, and finally, looking torn, Mikau excused themself.
The door clicked shut behind them, and River let out a long, exhausted breath and rubbed his forehead. Lina kept her eyes trained on his hands, on the edge of his rapier; on Kai, half-conscious, feebly shaking his head.
Lina held her breath, counted, released it.
Escape wasn’t an option: she imagined alarms being raised, dozens of guards and spellcasters on her in an instant.
She unbuttoned the cuffs of her sleeves and wrenched them up to her elbows, painfully aware of River’s focus, of his offhand moving to the hilt of his sword.
“I renounced my family’s faith.” She thrust out her arms, the browned skin waxy in the light. “If these scars aren’t proof of what I went through to disappear, then tell me how I can convince you.”
River’s gaze lowered to her wrists, his face unreadable. “You’ve been around Ione this whole time. Around all of us. Gods – how’d you manage to join Caelos?”
“I showed up in the middle of the night, scarred and drenched with rain.” Her breath caught, remembering it, crying and half-frozen after the hours-long trek up the mountain path.
How the high priestess pulled her inside, wrapped her up, sat her beside the boiler until she stopped shivering. “They didn’t ask questions.”
“They should have,” he retorted. “Who was it who agreed to take you in?”
She glared up at him, sharpening in the way Castor used to hate. That’s an ugly look you’re wearing. “I won’t bring them trouble. They saved me.”
On the bed, Kai murmured, his head falling to the side. He made a questioning noise, tilted his face towards River. “River?”
River blinked, the hard edge to his expression softening a fraction. “Welcome back.”
One hand lifted, before falling again, lifeless. “You look tired.” Kai grappled for the edge of the bed, shuffled a little to the side. “Come, take a wee nap.”
River glanced past Kai, sending Lina a look that said Kill me. “I am tired, Kai, I’ve been following your dumb ass around all day, watching you stand there and block a punch with your face.”
Kai scoffed. “Don’t follow, then.” His voice quieted, became sleepier. “Walk beside me next time.”
After a beat, River held out his hands, somewhat helplessly, and said in the gods’ tongue, “Are you even awake enough to deal with this?”
Lina played with her sleeves, hoping to hell it looked like she couldn’t understand him.
Kai didn’t speak at first. “With what?”
“This! You told me to bring her here. I’ve never done an interrogation before. Am I supposed to hurt her? I don’t want to.”
Well, that was good.
With difficulty, Kai shifted onto his elbows, his head bobbing. Slowly he looked around, frowning as he took in his own room; when his eyes landed on Lina he jerked back, startled.
“Oh, yeah,” he whispered, still to River. “My prisoner.”
“Good, you’re all caught up,” River said, impatient. “Do something about her.”